Sliding on the pavement across traffic on your shoulder and hip tends to focus one’s attention. I was watching, with a casual detachment, that a Peugeot had failed to run me over as I slid between it and the Mercedes. Across the yellow lines, a large truck rumbled by and I slid through the space […]

Oh, the feeling we had in May 2005, when we got off the train in Les Eyzies, France! After six months of reading, planning, packing and re-packing, we took an overnight flight to Toulouse, France, and found our way to the shop where we had arranged to leave our bike cases. On the sidewalk out […]

My red 26-inch “coaster” bike was an out-of-the-blue total surprise. I was expecting the usual shirts and socks for my 12-year-old Christmas, but a strange request was made on Christmas morning. “Follow the string at the back of the Christmas tree to see where it goes.” Huh? I hadn’t seen the string, and it went around […]

When I was 10 years old, my parents decided to sell our little farm and move into the city.  They sold the chickens and sold my donkeys. I wasn’t too upset because they replaced my wonderful pets with a bicycle. The donkeys went to a good new home with pasture and children. The bicycle was […]

My grandfather had a furniture repair store on Garibaldi Place in Chicago. We lived behind it. I had a tricycle that had a chain drive. I used to put a rope on the handlebars and imagined I was riding a horse. A bigger kid on the block wanted to ride my bike and broke one […]